Ceramic bubbles such as glass bubbles, which are also commonly known as “glass microbubbles”, “hollow glass microspheres”, “hollow glass beads”, or “glass balloons”, are widely used in industry, for example, as additives to polymeric compositions. In many industries, glass bubbles are useful, for example, for lowering weight and improving processing, dimensional stability, and flow properties of a polymeric composition. Generally, it is desirable that the glass bubbles be strong enough to avoid being crushed or broken during processing of the particular polymeric compound.
One application for such bubbles is syntactic foams. Syntactic foams containing ceramic bubbles (e.g., glass bubbles) are useful for insulation in a variety of applications due in part to their low thermal conductivity. For example, syntactic foams are used in wet insulation applications (i.e., insulation that is exposed to sea water) for off-shore oil pipelines or flowlines.